Roald Dahl Dressing Up Day

Jodie: "School are having a Roald Dahl themed dressing up day next week 
          Mum, what can I dress up as?"

Mum: "Well, you do love Roald Dahl stories and your favourite has got to bee 
          The Enormous Crocodile and how all the jungle animals save the 
          children from being eaten by the crocodile"
          
Jodie:  "That's a splendifirous story, shall I bee the baddy or the 
           goody?"

Mum:   "Well you could have lots of fun opening your mouth and showing
           all of your teeth like a crocodile or you could bee the super hero
           monkey or elephant and save the day"                      

Jodie:   "I definitely want to bee the crocodile but where will we find a
            dressing up crocodile?"
           
Mum:  "That's no problem, I've seen Pretend To Bee have some animal 
           capes and they look so much fun and easy to wear... and yes, they 
           do have a crocodile AND a monkey, in fact, they have lots of animal 
           costumes to choose from; there's a Giraffe, and a fantastic
           Mr Fox cape, ladybug and spider, which can all bee Roald Dahl's 
           characters"

Jodie:  (sounding excited)  "I can't wait for this dahlicious day, it's going to 
           bee so much fun!"

Pirate Treasure Hunt, learning through play

Set up a fun sight word activity for kids using simple DIY pirate gold doubloons hidden in a sand tray to make a treasure hunt!  Adapt this for letters of the alphabet for those learning their initial letter sounds, or numbers to create a maths themed focus instead.

Hands on, pirate learning fun for all!

What you need

cardboard, gold paint, black permanent marker pen, tray, play sand, treasure chest, telescope, Pretend To Bee Pirate Dressing Up Costumes  http://www.pretendtobee.co.uk/character-costumes 

What you do

Paint a large piece of cardboard with gold paint and leave it to dry. Then use a glass to draw around to create lots of circles for the gold doubloons. Onto these write some of the high frequency sight words found on the KS1 list, then cut them all out ready to play.( include similar ones so that they have to look closely to differentiate them all, e.g. “this, then, there, the”.)

Into a tray, tip a bag of play sand, then stand each gold doubloon word card into it, along with an empty treasure chest

How to Play

Tell the children that some pirates have hidden their ‘pieces of 8’and to look for each one as the word is called out and put them into the treasure chest before the pirates return! Use the telescope to help you!

Once the treasure game is completed ask the child to show you what is in the pirate treasure chest and read them back to you

Another challenge could be to put some of the words into a simple sentence with assistance if required

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What they are learning as they play:

Literacy: recognising familiar words by sight, reading unfamiliar words using phonic knowledge, using simple words to build a sentence

Physical: using all of their senses while they play

Creativity: dressing up and taking on a role or character, playing imaginative games

Let's Play Builders

Pretend play offers the opportunity to have fun and try out being someone else, and also develops lots of important early learning skills. Here are some easy ideas you can use to set up your pretend-play building site

• Stock up a tool box: You can buy some toy tools but your children will love it if you add in some real builders materials too. Try tape measures, big paint brushes, child-size spanners and screw drivers.
• Nuts and bolts: Twisting nuts and bolts together is great fine-motor practice and the children will relish the opportunity to try out some real builders kit.
• Hammer and nails: don’t rule out letting your children play with hammers and nails. Yes, they will need you to keep an eye on them but let them have a go with some small hammers. Try using blocks of polystyrene to hammer the nails in
• Cardboard boxes: add cardboard boxes of different shapes and sizes
• Add in the right clothes: Providing costumes encourages the children to try on different roles as they dress up.

        

• Try sand: add trowels and buckets or toy trucks and diggers to your sand pit and let the children experiment with wet and dry sand.
• Add in some writing for older children: Clipboards and a pencil. Let them sketch out what they are planning to build and write a list of the equipment they need to collect. Add in a tape measure so they can work with numbers too.

Welcome!

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